Global Cultural Relations: Soc218-04
             Culture is the patterns of behavior and thinking that individuals living in a society learn, create, and share. "One's culture contains their beliefs, behavior, language, rituals, art, technology, styles of dress, ways of producing and cooking food, religion, and political and economic systems." (Encarta 2004) Cross-culture makes comparisons of these contents between two or more different cultures. (Merriam-Webster 2004) Semantics, syntax and kinesics play a major role in all societies and cross-cultural communication.
             Semantics studies the linguistic relationships. What is the meaning of a word or a sentence? Semantics studies how the linguistics was intended by the individual speaking; how linguistics is translated. "The goal of semantics is to match the meanings of signs-what they stand for-with the process of assigning those meanings." (Encarta 2004) Does one person's meaning of something mean the same as the other person? This example is taken from my personal experience. My boyfriend is from Ankara, Turkey and has been in the US for about 3 years. He talks to his friends in Turkish all the time. He will laugh at something one of his friends said and I will ask him to translate what they said. When he translates the phrase into English for me, it does not make sense to me. It does not bare the same meaning in my language so I did not find it funny, I was confused! Although most words or phrases translate with ease from one language to another, there are those cultural phrases and words that only apply to that individual culture and cannot be translated and have the same meaning. Another example is slang language. Words or phrases in one language have a different literal translation and meaning in another language. I asked some of my friends for examples, see below:
              Turkish: aşk meleği; meaning "angel of love" &...